Saturday’s election will be “more than anything" a referendum on the carbon tax, according to
Tony Abbott
.

This well-worn theme of much of the past three years has been largely absent from the campaign proper.

In reviving it five days before polling day, the Opposition Leader was putting down a paper trail to ensure there was absolutely no doubt he could claim a clear mandate on the issue after September 7.

Backing his case, and setting new standards for throwing out the policy discussion into the future, Mr Abbott gave us some figures for what impact Labor’s carbon scheme would have in 37 years, in 2050.

At issue here is the prospect of a double dissolution election well before the end of a normal three-year term, a spectre which would disrupt Abbott’s promise to voters that a vote for the Coalition would mean a return to stable government and greater economic certainty.

The man who avoids many questions about his own plans by arguing they are “hypothetical" argued it would be “unimaginable" that a defeated Labor Party would persist with a carbon tax. That is, that Labor would dare to oppose his mandate to get rid of the tax.

The only problem is that it is completely imaginable that Labor would do just that.

Abbott suggested on Monday there was a “subterranean struggle", even a “developing civil war", inside Labor for the soul of the party post-election.

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Hard line in opposition

It is certainly true that, with defeat looming, Labor figures are more than aware that post September 7 it faces a range of decisions about leadership, policies and political strategy. But they also know that the nature of the choices they face, as much as the decisions they would actually have to take, will be shaped by the nature and extent of the loss.

At one end of the spectrum will be those who argue the Coalition should be just allowed to let rip, an opinion which would reflect the view that Labor lost out from seeking to modify Howard policies in the early years, and thus minimising the blowback on the Coalition. At the other end will be those who argue Labor should give an incoming Coalition government absolutely no quarter.

But weighing on how this debate plays out will be the fact that Abbott played such a hard line in opposition. Beyond ponderings about its own soul, the prospect of Labor taking an equally no-holds-barred approach to respect for mandates is pretty strong.

Abbott, after all, described the last six years of Labor government last week as an ‘‘aberration’’, not just three years of minority government. He insisted on Monday that “the last thing [Labor] will do if they lose this election is persist in support for a carbon tax".

“Having lost one election through support for a carbon tax, why on God’s earth would you lose a second supporting the same failed policy?’’

More than carbon tax

Well, no matter how much Abbott would like the issue to be just about the carbon tax, it will also be about other things that must pass through the Parliament: spending measures associated with the carbon package, such as the steel transformation plan, not to mention those that were part of the mining tax package.

There will be big questions over the Coalition’s Direct Action plan.

There will be decisions about support for policies which have nothing to do with either the carbon tax or the mining tax, such as the proposed paid parental leave scheme.

Having so aggressively pushed back the rules on mandates, Tony Abbott may yet have to reap what he has sown.